Walmart Website Glitch Led to Big Bargains

Scott Olson/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Causing an online frenzy among shoppers, an apparent glitch on Walmart’s website early Wednesday morning led to $8.95 listings for items such as computer monitors and projectors, which would normally be worth hundreds of dollars.

The country’s largest retailer was selling a 24-inch high definition Viewsonic computer monitor, an InFocus IN2124 Projector digital projectors and other products all for $8.95. The projector is listed for $579.99 on Newegg.com.

As customers shared about the deals on social media sites like Instagram, wondering if the site was hacked, products sold out in just hours.

A spokesman for Walmart said the company is still scanning the millions of items on its site to see if there are still any technical errors causing price discrepancies.

Walmart assured the media that the site was not hacked.

“We experienced a technical error that caused some items to show incorrect pricing,” Walmart said in a statement. “We are working quickly to correct the error and during this time, there may be intermittent site availability. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers.”

Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for Walmart, said: “I want to make very clear this is not a hack. This is an internal technical error.”

When asked if the company will honor items sold to customers at the mistakenly low prices, Jariwala said the company is “still working through those details.”

Just two weeks ago, Walmart stores in Louisiana experienced another frenzied shopping day, but that time with in-store customers. An error in the food stamps EBT system caused account limits to temporarily disappear, leading customers to load up shopping carts with hundreds of dollars worth of items.